Germany’s electric vehicle market is lagging behind several neighboring countries and to change that, the government launched an incentive program 6 months ago to give a direct discount of €4,000 for all-electric cars and €3,000 for plug-in hybrids.

When Germany introduced its new plan to boost electric vehicle adoption through new incentives, including a €4,000 discount at the purchase, Tesla claimed that they were purposely left out of the program because of a cap for vehicles with a starting price of less than 60,000 € negotiated by the government and the German auto industry.

Now Tesla managed to find a way to get access to the incentive through unbundling several features on its cars and significantly reducing the base price. expand full story

The program is capped to electric vehicles with a starting price of less than €60,000, which prompt Tesla to respond and claim that it was purposely left out by the auto industry since its vehicles start at over €60,000. While the program is not helping Tesla, it is certainly helping BMW as reports are coming out claiming that sales of the BMW i3 are somewhat unsurprisingly significantly rising in Germany since the launch of the program earlier this month. expand full story

But while the Netherlands and Norway are fighting over the technicalities, a senior government official in Germany confirmed they will impose a mandate for all new cars registered in the country to be emissions free by 2030. expand full story

Fast-forward to this week, Tesla is now claiming that the government and German automakers purposely included this base price restriction to exclude Tesla from the program. In its official response on its German website, Tesla writes:

“[the plan] was drawn up jointly with the Chairman of the German automobile manufacturers and the relevant ministries.

Unfortunately, it was decided that Model S and Model X customers wouldn’t benefit from this promotion, because what they call ‘premium’ is linked to an arbitrary price limit. This part of the program is obviously directed against Tesla.”

Tesla is right about the EV plan having been negotiated with German auto industry. Even German Chancellor Merkel was directly involved in the negotiations with executives from BMW, Mercedes-maker Daimler and Volkswagen. expand full story

The government is reportedly in negotiations with the German auto industry to figure out the financing of the initiative, but apparently the industry is only willing to pay for about a third of what the government is asking. expand full story